Progressive tyrant Obama takes neocon Bush's war against the Constitution, the rule of law, and Western civilization itself to a new low

The United States Constitution is the law of the land. Our nation’s founding charter was intended to reflect our British common law heritage, the lessons of Greek democracy, and the principles of the Roman Republic. It contains historic civil liberties protections that date back to the Magna Carta.

The founders were keen on making sure the federal government’s powers were limited and few, and given their recent experience with King George III, they made a particular point to balance and restrain the power of the executive branch. Unlike in other countries and certainly unlike in 18th-century England, in America even the head of state would not be above the law.

At the time, many observers saw our Constitution as the crowning achievement of the West. It was the grand culmination of philosophies on governance that spanned centuries. It wasn’t simply a statement of law; it was an affirmation of proper civilization.

President Obama has never seemed too bothered by constitutional restraint. To be fair, neither have most of his modern predecessors, who steadily expanded executive power far beyond its constitutional bounds. Liberals viewed President George W. Bush as one the worst enemies of civil liberties, because he supported legislation such as the Patriot Act, policies such as indefinite detention, and legal redefinitions of torture. Yet despite promising “change,” Obama has maintained most of Bush’s anti-civil liberties policies, even expanding them in some cases.

Now, Obama has lowered the bar even further. When American-born al Qaida collaborator Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last week, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.” There is little question that al-Awlaki was as bad as most reports indicated. He was inspiring radical jihadists to take up arms against the United States. There is also little question that the war against radical Islamists is a war unlike any other in our country’s history.

The problem with killing al-Awlaki is the precedent it sets. If President Obama’s overall domestic and foreign policies weren’t already bad enough, he has now taken the United States to a new civilizational low by undermining the most basic purpose and precept of American law: the protection of citizens’ rights through due process...MORE...LINK